Sharpest look at the Ring Nebula -- ever! (pictures)

The Hubble Space Telescope returns the highest-resolution images ever captured of Messier 57, also known as the Ring Nebula. They reveal a structure that until now was just theory.

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Hubble captures the Ring Nebula

New data returned from the Hubble space telescope has revealed the most high-resolution images ever captured of Messier 57. The dramatic nebula, widely known as the Ring Nebula, is shown in intricate detail, revealing a structure that until now had been just theory.

According to NASA, the colorful gases that comprise the nebula have been thrown off by a dying star at the center -- and are now seen filled with intricate, lower-density material stretching throughout the colorful ring. That star at the core of the Ring Nebula is a white dwarf, the remnant of a star similar to our sun that burned out just a few thousand years ago.

As stars lose their reserves of hydrogen, their outer atmospheres puff out and escape into space. These still-expanding clouds of gas, now about a light-year across in the Ring Nebula's case, form the planetary nebulae, NASA says.

From these new observations, astronomers say the nebula's blue center -- emitted from atoms of helium -- is actually shaped like a football. The darker spines on the inside of the reddish ring are towers of gas slightly denser than their surroundings. The inner ring's sea-green glow is produced by hydrogen and oxygen, while the red of the outer ring traces nitrogen. The darker orange comes from sulfur.

Wide-field view

Geometry and structure of the Ring Nebula

This graphic shows the geometry and structure of the Ring Nebula as viewed from the side, showing the nebula's wide halo, inner region, lower-density lobes of material stretching towards and away from us, and the prominent, glowing disc.